About two weeks ago, Louisiana Republican Governor Bobby Jindal made a plea to Republicans: “We’ve got to stop being the stupid party. It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults.”

Former RNC chair and Mississippi governor Haley Barbour seconded Jindal’s comments. According to the New York Daily News, “Barbour said Republicans like former Senate candidates Richard Mourdock and Todd Atkin hurt the rest of the party with their inflammatory comments about rape and pregnancy. The comments they made were stupid comments, offensive comments and in today’s world when a candidate in one state says something, the negative effect of that can spill over to a lot other of candidates.”

So the GOP has a major problem, when two of its major figures (Jindal might make a run for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2016) are using the word ‘stupid” in regards to their own party.

How did this happen? Well, over the last few years we have heard a steady stream of bizarre statements from Republicans such as Christine O’Donnell, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Rick Santorum, etc. This has really hurt the party in the eyes of the average American voter.

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Things have gotten so bad that the big money people have had to step in to try to reign in people who have made strange statements in the past and are considering running in the future. According to an article by Jeff Zeleny in Sunday’s New York Times (“Top G.O.P. Donors Seek Greater Say in Senate Races”), a new group, the Conservative Victory Project, is being created by the American Crossroads Super PAC. The idea is that the establishment GOP is trying to prevent the Tea Party from nominating candidates who can win primaries, but lose general elections due to the aforementioned bizarre statements.

It looks like the first test of the new group’s strength will be in Iowa, where long time Democratic incumbent Senator Tom Harkin has announced he will not run for re-election. Republican Representative Steve King might decide to run for Harkin’s Senate seat. King has compared illegal immigrants to dogs and Capitol Hill janitors to the old East German Stasi (communist secret police). This was after the janitors had the gall to put low-energy light bulbs in King’s office. Do you think those are stupid comments to make if you want to get elected to the Senate? Or are they really stupid comments? Karl Rove, one of the people backing the Conservative Victory Project, sure must think so.

The GOP has massive problems because as a letter writer in Sunday’s Inquirer puts it many people perceive many Republicans to be “… prejudiced, homophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-women, gun-crazy, and just plain mean-spirited.”

Now you could fight this perception by making it clear that you are not prejudiced against President Obama because he is multi-cultural. And that you are not pushing Voter ID to prevent African-Americans from voting.

You could fight it by supporting gay rights and dropping opposition to gay marriage.

You could fight it by supporting immigration reform.

You could fight it by dropping idiotic remarks about women and supporting the Violence Against Women Act when it’s time to vote on it. You could fight it by dropping any support for vaginal probes.

You could fight it by opposing Wayne LaPierre and his ludicrous ideas about more guns being the solution to the fact that you are twenty times more likely to be killed by a gun in the USA than someone from another developed country (Washington Post online 12/14/12)

You could fight it by dropping the mean-spirited approach Republicans took when questioning Hillary Clinton about Benghazi. You could fight it by dropping the mean-spirited approach John McCain and Lindsay Graham took when questioning Chuck Hagel, a fellow Republican, last week.

Or, as I mentioned last week, you can continue to try to gerrymander everything so they GOP wins no matter who the majority votes for.

Or, you can try to nominate candidates who tone the rhetoric down a bit but still believe things that would not be supported by most Americans.

So, I will go back to reading Paul Krugman in my New York Times, while merrily watching the GOP continue to self-destruct by alienating the young, the poor, the middle class, Latinos, African-Americans, women, gays, union members, and people who want, as Reg Henry mentioned in Saturday’s Times Herald, equal emphasis put on both “well-regulated militia” and “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” parts of the Second Amendment.

Now, what word would you use for a party that doesn’t get all that? Well, I wouldn’t use the word “smart.”